OF ANGELS AND THE DEAD

‘So what then, lads, are we off?’ Xoán carried on staring at the telly with sleepy eyes. His eyelids were swollen, the whites of his eyes lined with small, bloody veins of a yellow, pallid colour. He’d barely slept the night before. He hadn’t been to bed in two nights. He would read. Or go out on the town, boozing copiously and breakfasting on coffee and croissants in the Galicia, which opened at five. Now his head hurt. Not overly. It was an angry, superficial pain that didn’t go away: softly, softly… He inhaled deeply and blew the smoke into Guillerme’s face. One leg on top of the other, unenthusiastically, smoking calmly (you have to smoke slowly, see, like this, lazily, bit by bit, with a certain style, blow the smoke out sweetly through your nose or half-open, weary mouth), though he found it difficult to enunciate any words, to speak, to have to say, ‘Come on then, let’s go,’ to have to say, ‘No, leave it, wait,’ to have to say in a whisper, ‘My God, what a state I’m in!’ even though he found it difficult (Nogueira didn’t say a word, Pose neither, he gazed with golden, motionless eyes at the television screen), he managed to reply in a bland, weak voice, ‘So what we going to do then?’

Xoán used his hand to comb his long, excessively curly locks, which spilled down his forehead (‘Why don’t you get a haircut, son, you look a real sight,’ his mother had said when she left), damp, greasy locks he allowed to grow with pleasure, which twisted a little in the rain, like the down on his skin after a shower.

He slowly lifted the cup to his lips and unenthusiastically sipped the dark, bitter liquid of cold, acidic coffee that had lost its taste. He didn’t feel exactly extenuated as a result of the lack of sleep over two nights (he’d only slept a couple of hours today, before lunch), or ill either, or even really melancholy.

He made an effort to stand up. He was about to say, ‘Well, lads, I’m off…’ But he kept quiet. What was he going to do on his own? He leaned back into his chair, one leg crossed over the other, his jacket sparse and unbuttoned, showing his black jumper, which was worn and deformed from use. His mother would never understand him, but Xoán liked wearing old, slightly frayed clothes. His mother didn’t understand anything, he thought. What difference was there between his mother’s brain and that of an idiot, for example? Xoán frowned, arched his swarthy eyebrows, wearily shook his head and, with the delight of a scientist coldly confirming some natural phenomenon, came to the conclusion there was none, that was the truth of it.

Nothing. There was nothing that held the slightest interest for him at that moment. If, for example, Guillerme were to suggest they got up, left the café, left the tedium (that was the word, really) of the café, that blaring television that sent every blessed soul around the bend (‘God, this device is enough to drive you crazy,’ Xoán had muttered tiredly, weakly, overcome by his own effort, feeling annoyed, but without conviction, like a fire burning deplorably, even though it was still a fire), that hellish boredom, prolonged ennui, long, long and sticky – so long, thought Xoán – of a night of desperation that was the café, softly, softly, unending, softly, softly…

He rubbed the skin of his temples with his fingers. He couldn’t endure such pain, like this, softly, softly…

He couldn’t bear it.

But if Guillerme, for example, were to say, ‘Come on, lads, let’s go somewhere else, get a move on, for fuck’s sake,’ he was prepared to pay attention, he had nothing to lose, same as if he chose to stay, to remain there, in the café, next to Pose, next to Nogueira, next to Guillerme himself, restless and impatient that afternoon of an ashen sky and sticky dampness that misted up the glass of windows in which the images of things deposited their confused, blurred reflections… their silhouettes decomposed in the glass, evanescent and inconsistent, like memories, vague recollections that fade, slowly soften in a yawning sea of tedium and laziness.

Xoán opened his mouth, took a deep breath and narrowed his eyes in a half-yawn he failed to suppress, which provoked tears that had nothing to do with mourning in the meridian apathy of his vaguely blue irises.

‘So what, are we going?’ Guillerme insisted in a voice that struggled vainly to sound a little pert and awake in order to do away with the lifeless stagnation that had overcome everything (like an abrasive acid attacking things, dissolving them, eating away at their borders and cases and finally abandoning them to the restfulness of death, in silent, unspasmodic agony), which Guillerme longed to conquer, tense, filled with diffuse anger, of no particular abode, showing itself in some gesture, some look of anxiety, some uneasy expression that, from time to time, flickered across the faces of the assembled company or revealed a deceitful gesture in Xoán, who, bewildered by the black and white luminescence of the television set, acquired a phantom, carnivalesque mask.

Xoán grabbed a pack on the table, took another cigarette and raised it to his lips while searching for matches in his trouser pockets with his other hand. The pack of Ducados, which he’d bought shortly before lunch, was now, two hours later, almost empty.

He lit a match and thought of the cancer he would contract if he continued smoking so much, so immoderately. ‘Oh my goodness, how you smoke, you’ll end up poisoning yourself, son, if you carry on like that!’ his mother would say whenever he was at home. And Xoán, instead of distancing himself from tobacco, would experience an obscure, ill-defined pleasure, a cowardly, slightly suicidal glee, which led him, in such moments, to smoke constantly, at every available opportunity, between classes, in bed or in the café.

Pose had just said something.

‘What?’ asked Xoán listlessly, out of inertia.

‘Take a look at that… don’t you reckon? Worth a fuck, she isn’t bad.’

Xoán raised his eyes to the television screen. They were showing a report on the Costa Brava, aimed at promoting tourism. A foreign woman in a bikini was taking part in an interview with the journalist.

‘Do you like Spain…? ¿Le gusta España…?’

‘Oh, yes, I like it very much.’

‘Why? ¿Por qué?’

‘There are beautiful beaches here, and sun…’

‘Do you like bull-fighting? ¿Le gustan a usted los toros?’

‘Yes, very much! I’m a Cordobés fan.’

She wasn’t bad. She had a slender body and a face like that of an actress. But he wasn’t especially impressed by such women: they were too unreal, too distant, as if they had been fabricated artificially.

‘She isn’t bad,’ he said.

Pose shook his head thoughtfully.

‘She’s a goddess,’ he let out.

‘Who, the English one?’ asked Nogueira, sprawled in a chair he balanced on its back legs. Before receiving an answer, he exclaimed, ‘Fuck, the girl must have a fanny this big!’

They burst out laughing. A little over the top, hysterically, falsely, deliberately. Only Xoán traced a mute, inert smile with his lips.

‘You’ve seen it, right?’ inserted Guillerme.

‘Well,’ said the other, playing along, ‘not exactly seen it. I’ve felt it.’

The conversation was finally moving, though it did so by dragging itself along the ground. Guillerme, of course, soon availed himself of the opportunity to liven up the atmosphere and get things going.

The flame of the match, pale and sallow, almost burned his fingers. Tired and absent, Xoán gestured in pain and threw the match to the ground. The floor of the café was dotted in black stains made by cigarette butts. Stunned, holding the cigarette in his fingers, without moving his hand, Xoán stared at the flaccid body of the match, which quickly blackened before going out in a puff of white, yawning, ephemeral smoke.